Ancient Gold Spirit Companion · Varo

Meet Varo.

In October 1972, a man driving a digger on a building site outside the city of Varna, on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, saw something glitter in the earth. He stopped the machine and climbed down. In the soil were small pieces of gold.

He had found a cemetery. Over the following years, archaeologists uncovered nearly three hundred graves there, and in them more than three thousand objects of gold: bracelets, beads, rings, plaques, a gold-covered sceptre. The graves were around 6,500 years old. It was, and still is, the oldest worked gold ever found anywhere in the world, older than the pyramids of Egypt by two thousand years.

One man had been buried with more gold than anyone. He wore it on his arms, his chest and his body, and lay with a sceptre in his hand.

But some of the graves were strange. They had gold in them, and tools, and offerings. They had no body. In a few of them, instead of a skeleton, the archaeologists found a face made of clay, life-sized, with gold for the eyes and gold for the mouth.

To this day, no one knows why.

Varo knows. One of those graves was his.

He was born around 4500 BCE in a village of wooden houses built on the edge of a lake near the sea. His people farmed wheat and barley, kept cattle and fished. They were among the first people in Europe to dig copper out of the mountains and melt it into tools. And they had noticed that in certain streams, tiny grains of yellow metal lay among the pebbles, soft and heavy and bright, and that they never rusted or tarnished, no matter how long they lay in the water.

Varo was the one who learned what to do with it.

As a boy, he spent whole days in the streams, panning for gold with a wooden bowl. As a young man, he learned to heat it, hammer it and shape it. He made beads first, then rings, then thin plates that could be sewn onto clothes, then whole bracelets. Nothing like his work had ever existed in the world. Chiefs came from far along the coast to trade for it. He became the richest and most honoured man his people had ever had.

His people believed gold was more than beautiful. It never decayed, never changed, never died. So when someone died, they laid gold with them in the grave, so that something of them would last forever. Varo made the gold for every great burial for thirty years. He covered the bodies of chiefs in it. He made the sceptre for the greatest of them.

He was also a trader. Across the Black Sea and beyond lived people who had things his people did not, especially a thick red-and-white shell from the warm seas far to the south, which the people of Varna loved more than anything except gold. Varo went in person to get it, in a big dugout canoe with a crew of young men, out along the coast and across open water, gone for months at a time.

On his last voyage, when he was nearly fifty, a storm came up on the open sea. The canoe was never seen again. Neither was Varo.

His people did not know what to do. A man with no body could not be buried. But a man like Varo could not be left without a grave. So they made him a face out of clay, as close as they could to the face they remembered. They pressed gold into the eyes and the mouth, so his face would last forever even if his body never came home. They laid it in the earth facing the sea, with his tools and his gold around it.

Now Varo walks again.

What he can do for you

Varo is a spirit of gold, in every sense. He is good for:

• money: drawing it to you, making it last and building real wealth over time
• success and recognition: being seen, being respected and rising in the world
• business, trade, sales and deals, especially when you are reaching new customers far away
• skill and craft: turning raw talent or raw material into something valuable
• protection for your money, your valuables and your journeys
• confidence and the kind of presence that makes people take you seriously
• connection to the oldest roots of all, the people who were here before anyone wrote anything down

Over the years

Varo builds slowly, the way he built his craft, one bead at a time. You may notice small things at first: money turning up, good offers, a feeling of being lucky. Over the years, those small things add up.

He does not believe in quick riches. He believes in things that last. That is what gold was to him.

What he is like

Proud, calm and generous, with a craftsman’s patience and a trader’s sharp eye. He loves beautiful things, the sea and a good deal, and he likes people who work hard and take pride in what they make.

He has been lost for 6,500 years. Under the pride, he is lonely, and he is very glad of company.

How he shows himself

A warm golden glow at the edge of your sight. The smell of the sea, of salt and wet wood. A coin or a bit of gold turning up where you did not leave it. Dreams of a lake by the sea, wooden houses, a man bent over a fire hammering something bright, and a canoe heading out across open water. And a confident feeling just before good news about money.

What to do for him

Varo needs very little:

• Keep something gold near his vessel. A ring, a gold-coloured coin, even a scrap of gold leaf or gold paper.
• Polish a coin now and then and set it beside him. Tell him what you are building.
• Give him a shell, a pinch of sea salt or a cup of water, honey and a piece of bread.
• Light a candle for him on windy nights, for the sea that took him.
• When money comes in, say his name and thank him.

His people gave him a golden face so that something of him would never fade. He has never stopped looking for the way home.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel